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coondoggie writes "The European Space Agency's Mars exploring satellite will make a number of close-up passes of the Martian moon Phobos. The Mars Express, which the agency launched in 2003, has begun a series of flybys of Phobos, the largest moon of Mars, that will ultimately set a new record for the closest pass to Phobos — skimming the surface at 50 km, or about 31 miles. This is only about 5 times the irregular moon's average radius. The data collected by the satellite could help solve some of the mysteries about the moon, beginning with that of its origin."

Sir, i herby award you one internet, as you have taken the simple task of deriding a person, and raised it well beyond an art form, nay, i say that this may be the grand masterpiece of insults, distilled from the very essence of the tears of a thousand children, who ran home crying after being called 'doodie head'.
I am humbled, to have witnessed such a performance.

You can't fool me! They got Stanley Kubrick to spray-paint a potato silver and photograph it against a black background. We never went to Mars, it's all Industrial Light and Magic sworn to secrecy. Damn you, George Lucas!

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That'll never sell on Ebay!

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When calculating the density, this gives a surprising figure because it
seems that parts of Phobos may be hollow...

There was a 50 year old hypothesis that Phobos was hollow, with a very low density, in order to explain the anomalous drag on the satellite, which has now been shown to be due to the tidal bulge raised on Mars by Phobos. The measured density is about 1.9 gm/cm^3, which is a little low, but not unusual compared to the asteroids [mac.com], especially small asteroids.

These are probably just all rock piles, repeatedly fractured by collisions and without enough self-gravity to smush things back together, so some internal voids would not be surprising.

I think they flew to the wrong moon and ended up photographing the UESC Marathon instead. I just hope that they don't try to go LCROSS on it; if a large bomb is allowed to detonate in the Engineering Section, the Marathon would be ^&2``~<Colloquialism Search Error #F9C>

This all began in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in 1936. The Leather Goddesses of Phobos are just finalizing their plans for the invasion of Earth. People have been abducted by the Leather Goddesses for the final testing of the plan which will enslave all of humanity. Unless this nefarious plan is stopped, the Earth will be turned into these twisted vixens' pleasure dome. For some unknown reason, this outcome is considered unfavorable.

Sorry to be blunt, but I don't visit Slashdot to get redirected to some shitty ad-plastered website with half-assed copy/pasted information.
Was it really so hard for the submitter to give this a proper non-misleading title, and a link to the actual ESA press release? [esa.int]
Is there a way to get kdawson fired? He seems to pull this shit a lot.

I'm going to guess it's because the linked article had that nice photo to look at. You know, the extreme close up photo that was the whole point of the article submission. Not that official information like the link you suggested isn't nice.

Looks pretty low resolution to me compared to NASA's HiRISE [wikipedia.org] images from 2008. The wikipedia page has a link to a nice time magazine gallery and the Official HiRISE Site [arizona.edu]Go ahead click on the 3374 × 3300 pixel image on this UCL page [ucl.ac.uk] for an EXTREME closeup of Phobos.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that either Phobos or Deimos are composed of something we really want. Titanium, uranium, etc. What would be the effect on Mars' orbit if we mined the moon? I know that their gravity, compared to Mars, is negligible, but they still have an effect on the orbit.

What would happen if one or both moons were removed from their orbits?

It would be safe to assume that the moons help to stabilize Mars' rotation around it's own axis. Phobos has an associated tidal bulge on Mars itself, I don't know about Deimos. Without these moons, Mars' geographic pole axis would wander around the celestial sphere. That means that the geographic poles would be in the same place on Mars, but the "north star" would change every so often. Be aware that this happens on Earth, too, in a 24000 year cycle.

You are ignorant. Many of the technologies that we have now owe their existence to space technology. We know more than ever about our own planet's environment, its ecosystem, weather and lifeforms thanks to the exploration of other planets. It is likely that you would not even have a computer, nor access to a global network to post your message on if not for technology developed for space exploration. There is also the simple drive for knowledge, but obviously knowing things isn't your modus operandi.

What REALLY needs to be cut is military and weapons funding. The invasion of Iraq alone costs around ten billion tax dollars per year for a pointless and unscrupulous occupation.

I don't agree with the people who hate any spending that has to do with space, but there has to be a balance somewhere. I see the benefit of the Apollo missions and they were worth the cost, but space missions are expensive compared to a lot of earth-based science. This mission seems worth the cost, as it will help us plan future missions, but just as people shouldn't reject spending as soon as they see "space", we shouldn't automatically accept it either. Science will never get as much funding as we would

So what you're saying is that we should keep space exploration because while it's primary goal is of limited usefulness, the technology developed in achieving it is quite useful? But on the other hand, neither the military's primary goal (i.e. keeping civilians alive) nor the technology developed (e.g. rockets, nuclear physics, computers, the internet) are worth what we spend on it? How's that consistent?

(You may have a point about Iraq, but that's getting into specifics and would require being complet

Many of the technologies that we have now owe their existence to space technology...

What REALLY needs to be cut is military and weapons funding.

While I agree with you, you should bear in mind that many advances in medicine, surgery and our understanding of anatomy owe their existence to war. A lot of knowledge was gained on how the visual cortex works by performing tests on soldiers with localised gun shot wounds to the head, for example.

To complete the circle, many of the technologies behind the original space race likely wouldn't have been funded if they didn't have nuclear weapons applications. Big-ticket science has, historically, hitched a ride on military expendature. Whether that's desirable is a whole other question, but there you go.

While I agree with you, you should bear in mind that many advances in medicine, surgery and our understanding of anatomy owe their existence to war. A lot of knowledge was gained on how the visual cortex works by performing tests on soldiers with localised gun shot wounds to the head, for example.

actually the main reason for NASA being founded was to improve the US's rocket technology so they could better deliver nuclear weapons to other continents. NASA has a pretty big connection to the military, the line is pretty blurred as to what amount of NASA's funding actually is military spending.

I support science funding, but a billion dollars can fund a lot of terrestrial science projects, so any space mission better not be a stand-alone one as long as the budget stays so high. I agree putting a man on Mars isn't practical in the short term, but we should still be working towards making a Mars mission become practical. A data-gathering mission should have to fight directly with telescope projects for funding, otherwise it has to provide more direct benefits. For example, the article says it is pla

Your sight is short and your mind narrow! We're running out of resources at an alarming rates and I'm not talking petroleum. Perhaps we can create extremely good recycling technology but I doubt it will occur before another great war. If we don't start figuring out how to get off the rock we call home we will surely perish on it. We will need a great deal of effort and time to figure out how to survive in space as it is a dangerous place. Yes, I know you don't care, it won't happen in your lifetime but the